J.P. Morgan & Co. and the Crisis of Capitalism: From the Wall Street Crash to World War II

"Late in February 1930 Owen Young journeyed by private railcar to Arizona. Young was at the height of his fame as a General Electric executive, as the founder of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and as an international statesman whose name adorned the just concluded Young Plan. Time magazine named him man of the year in 1929. He was bruited as a possible Presidential candidate in 1932. Discussion with his travelling companion, Everett Case, turned to Young's friend, J.P. Morgan Jr. [Jack Morgan], the senior partner of J.P. Morgan & Co. Young thought that it was a pity that Jack Morgan was so little known to the American public, for J.P. Morgan & Co. was "the most important banking house in the world with the power of affecting the lives of people in this country and throughout the world". A decade later, Morris Ernst, a prominent New York lawyer and the general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1929-55, wrote another Morgan partner, Russell C. Leffingwell. Ernst mused "I think your house has a responsibility that is practically superhuman, and assuming complete honesty and ability can never be met to the satisfaction of society." Young was an intimate of the Morgan partners, Ernst a critic who believed that the Morgan part in American life was baleful. Both agreed that J.P. Morgan & Co.'s influence was pervasive"-- Provided by publisher During the interwar period, J.P. Morgan was the most important bank in the world and at the crossroads of US politics, international relations and finance. In J.P. Morgan & Co. and the Crisis of Capitalism, Martin Horn brings us the first in-depth history of how J.P. Morgan responded to the greatest crisis in the history of financial capitalism, shedding new light on the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the coming of World War II. Horn shows how J.P. Morgan & Co as a business responded to the 1929 Crash and the Depression, including its part in the New York Stock Exchange Crash, arguing that the Morgan partners misread the seriousness of the crash. He also offers new insights into the interactions of politics and finance, exploring J.P. Morgan's relationship with the Hoover administration and the bank's clash with Roosevelt over New Deal legislation. The first in-depth history of how J.P. Morgan responded to the greatest crisis in the history of financial capitalism. The book sheds new light on the Wall Street Crash, relations with Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Great Depression and New Deal, as well as the coming of World War II.